Barrington highlights honeybees' plight (From This is The West Country)

Barrington highlights honeybees' plight

6:20pm Wednesday 26th May 2010 in Somerset By Steve Sowden

BARRINGTON Court will be a hive of activity this summer as part of a major national campaign looking at the plight of honeybees in Britain.

TV presenter Kate Humble is supporting the campaign and BBC Somerset is adopting its own honeybee hive at the National Trust property to allow listeners to follow the developing wildlife drama of a new colony on-air.

The collapse of honeybee colonies has been widely reported but most of the UK’s 250 bee species appear to be in decline, which has serious consequences for crop pollination.

The aim of the national Bee Part Of It campaign is to investigate and highlight the decline of the honeybee population in Britain and to encourage people, locally and up and down the country, to get together and do what they can to help the honeybee re-establish itself.

There are plenty of ways for people to lend their support to help honeybees. Planting the sort of plants and flowers the bees love in gardens, pots, windowsills and balconies would go a long way to encouraging the numbers of bees to increase.

Springwatch presenter Kate Humble said: “I first got interested in bees when I was filming with a local bee-keeper for Springwatch and realised that by becoming a beekeeper I could do something really tangible to help the fairly desperate situation our bee population has found itself in.”

The Bee Part of It campaign is a partnership between the BBC and National Trust.